Christmas Eve & Day 2014

First of all, let's talk about how we still have our Halloween pumpkins sitting in our house waiting to be carved. We keep saying- we'll carve really cool Thanksgiving pumpkins, we'll carve Christmas tree pumpkins, let's put them in the hall and forget that we spend money on those pumpkins... FYI they are still in the hall, we were going to carve New Year's pumpkins but maybe they'll be Valentines Day pumpkins...

I once spent a Christmas in Santa Barbara all by myself. I cooked delicious food for myself and watched a marathon of Christmas movies. I actually really loved it. I do however love having big parties at Christmas time too. We invited our housemates, the Shapiro's, and our friends the Jones's to a fancy Christmas Eve dinner.

Someday I will have a big dining room table that will allow us to invite over everyone we know but until then, our little one will do. I got to pull out my favorite dishes and my fancy polka dot champagne flutes that Thomas gifted me last year. I also discovered that somewhere along the line we have lost all but 3 salad forks. I am very talented, it takes a lot of skill to lose that many forks in just a couple of years.

The Christmas Eve Menu

Fresco's Salad with Gorgonzola and Walnuts

Garlic-Thyme New York Steaks

Broccolini & Rye Breadcrumb Gratin  

Creamy Au Gratin Potatoes

Warm Chocolate Brownies

Charlotte Russe 

Sparkling Apple Cider

This guy knows how to make a mean steak!

Thomas makes a Charlotte Russe every year at Christmas. It's a creamy vanilla dessert that you can easily eat too much of.

Ryan uses his Christmas Cracker confetti for hair. Classy.

We made a stocking for each of our guests and filled them with a few small presents each. It was so fun to walk around the store with Thomas planning out what we should get each person. After dinner we watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I forget how inappropriate/hilarious that move is every year.

You may not be able to tell but our tree is super dead. We forgot to water it a couple days after we brought it home and it dried up in no time. The whole thing started to sag and lean to one side. I think it still looked nice and glowy on Christmas morning (above right) but we did have to take it down before the new year. I was afraid it would burst into flames at any moment.

Our housemates cleaned up this year with Christmas gifts! They were opening things forever! Does anyone else do the thing where you just pile up all the wrapping until everything is opened so you can enjoy the chaos of it all for a bit?

We got three cast iron pans this year- a Le Cruset Skinny Grill, an Aebleskiver pan and a mini skillet. We got some emergency preparedness items and a first aid kit, I got some Hunter boot socks and a new shirt.

Please notice how the little rubber tree is still alive!

 Thomas got a new sound bar for the TV. Everything now sounds even more amazing and we've watched a few good action movies to test it out. I think he loves it.

In the afternoon we went to see Into the Woods with the Shapiro's and the Jones's- it's amazing, I would highly recommend it. We realized that we had planned so carefully for the Christmas Eve dinner and breakfast that we ended up with no food in the house by Christmas night. Thomas and I headed to our favorite Chinese restaurant (A Christmas Story style) and had crab rangoons and General Gao's chicken for dinner. There was a great sunset and it was in the 50's during the day. I know a lot of people wish for a white Christmas but I will take a sunny, warm(ish) Christmas over a snowy one any year.